


lives are built from moments

by reliquiaen



Category: Flight Rising
Genre: F/F, Original Character(s), Short Stories, The Reliquary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 13:52:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17561639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reliquiaen/pseuds/reliquiaen
Summary: this is where i'm gonna throw any short stand-alone stories about the clan and its residents. starting with how tarryn decided that poisoning folks and raising the dead is not, in fact, all there is to life. lmao.





	lives are built from moments

Tarryn never considered herself in the least bit sentimental.

She’d set herself up in the Reliquary more for its lands than its residents. In fact, back then there hadn’t been more than a handful of dragons anyway; and fewer familiars. Interacting with them had not been part of her plan at all. Instead she’d established a nice little plot of land tucked away beneath the gloomy trees where she could start a garden. And she’d hoped never to be disturbed. The Reliquary could go about its business and she could go about hers. Never the twain need meet.

Of course, she probably should’ve known better.

-

As the clan grew – one dragon at a time – the lair expanded with it. Sometimes, new arrivals were loud and Tarryn took great pleasure in teaching them not to go anywhere near her. Some of them were adventurous or curious or young with a penchant for mischief; all of them learned not to bother her. Eventually, even as the Reliquary bustled around her, Tarryn was left mostly alone.

Until one morning, Callana arrived.

Although even that is somewhat misleading. Callana hadn’t bothered her at all in the beginning. Bereave whispered horrible things about her and Seven made a distasteful face and Denara merely sighed, but the point is Callana had no reason whatsoever to seek her out.

Tarryn, truthfully, didn’t even know she was there. Callana, it turned out, was a wanderer, a musician and storyteller, wilful and adventurous and rebellious and filled to her antennae with that bone deep need of all Wind dragons to travel. They crossed paths accidentally one evening as Tarryn was collecting mushrooms but she hadn’t thought anything of it. Callana was a traveller. She wouldn’t stay.

Only she did.

She flittered through the treetops, darted through the underbrush; searching. Tarryn managed to evade her for only so long. Alas.

“What on Sorneith are you doing?”

Tarryn stiffened, eyes peering from under her cowl as she attempted to locate the source of the words. A rustle turned her gaze upwards.

There, lounging on one slender branch, tail thrown casually over the side to flick absently to some silent tune, perched a skydancer. Her dark fur stirred as she shuffled her deep red wings, head falling to one side so her crest tumbled across her neck. She wore elegant red silks and had rose flowers woven into her mane. Tarryn blinked at her.

“What?”

The skydancer quirked a smile. “I asked what you’re doing.”

Tarryn glanced down to her paws, the soil, the weeds she’d unceremoniously ripped out of the ground. She blinked again. “I’m gardening.”

“That doesn’t seem scary at all, really.” In one graceful movement, the skydancer slipped from her space on the tree and landed beside her. “I’m Callana.”

She paused a moment, unsure what was expected of her. At length she replied, “Tarryn.”

“I know,” Callana told her, eyes twinkling with… something. “The others here say you’re terrifying. A witch who curses those who dare set foot in her swamp.”

“This isn’t a swamp,” Tarryn felt the need to point out.

“So I see.”

They lapsed into silence. Tarryn slowly kneaded the earth in front of her.

“Why are you here?” she asked eventually.

Callana shrugged one shoulder. “I like stories. I travel all over the world to find them. Most clans have at least one good story. When Bereave mentioned having a nasty reclusive witch who poisons them all the time living in the woods, I thought I should investigate.” Her head fell to the other side this time. “You’re not what I expected.”

Tarryn squinted at her, trying to look menacing and failing. “What did you expect?”

“Oh,” she sighed, waving a hand. “Something… scary. You’re just cute.”

They fell into silence again and for lack of anything better to do, Tarryn went back to her gardening. She wasn’t just growing plants, oh no, that was far too mundane. But she thought it might be a bit early to harvest her newest creations. So she moved on to the next plot of dirt and began tugging the weeds out of it too.

Callana stayed with her. Just watching. Sometimes she’d ask a question and Tarryn would answer in the fewest words possible.

When Callana eventually left her to rejoin the clan proper, Tarryn found she rather missed the company. How odd.

-

Incidents involving viral outbreaks, unusual diseases and the poisoning of individuals and food sources, increased in frequency for the few weeks after Callana’s eventual and inevitable departure from the Reliquary. Tarryn would maintain the two were not related.

They _weren’t_.

(They might be.)

-

Hollen alerted her to the arrival of a trespasser about two months later. His agitation was almost palpable. But when Tarryn rushed to see who it was and what they were doing to her garden, she merely found Bereave stuck in a tree having launched herself upwards to escape Hollen’s tusks.

When Tarryn glared at her, Bereave only smiled. Or perhaps it was more a smirk.

“Your girlfriend’s back,” she laughed. “So you can stop infecting everyone with strange sicknesses, okay?” Then she leapt from her space and raced off through the trees.

It wasn’t until later, when Callana appeared silently outside her den carved into the hollow base of an old tree that she had any idea what Bereave had been talking about. Callana had smiled at her, a tentative thing as if she didn’t know whether Tarryn would even want to see her again. Tarryn didn’t even know until that moment. Then she decided that yes, she did quite enjoy Callana’s company.

-

It went on like this for a while. Callana would leave, Tarryn would increase her output of strange concoctions and everyone would whine about it. When Callana finally decided that she’d simply remain a part of the clan it was as though the entire lair let out a collective sigh of relief.

(Tarryn still released diseases into the clan whenever Callana left, but it was less awful after that.)

-

“Calla are very pretty flowers.”

Callana paused, frozen in shock by the words that had greeted her. When Tarryn looked up she could’ve sworn the glitter in Callana’s eyes was something other than simply surprise.

“How did you know it was me?” the skydancer asked softly, stepping closer.

“Hollen has been keeping watch for you.”

“Oh yeah?” she teased, an awful playful smile curling her lips. “Missed me, did you?”

Tarryn ignored the jibe.

Silence descended. Callana, however, was one of few dragons who seemed not to mind that Tarryn didn’t always have something to say. And after a while, she broke it herself.

“I brought you something.”

When Tarryn looked over, Callana held a wrapped parcel between her paws.

“Why?” she asked. But she took it, carefully peeling back the paper.

Callana shrugged. “I thought of you.”

Inside was a scarf of fabric the same shimmering blue as herself. “It’s lovely,” Tarryn whispered.

“Yeah?” Calla didn’t seem to believe her. “You don’t have to wear it.”

But Tarryn was already looping it about her neck, tucking it into her cloak. “It’s warm. Thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

Something about the way Calla smiled at her, though, made Tarryn think perhaps the warmth wasn’t entirely due to the scarf. No matter how preposterous that seemed.

-

The query came unexpected and without preamble.

“Would you like to come with me?”

Callana had been lying quietly in a patch of sunlight watching Tarryn at her work, mixing another potion of indeterminate nature. She’d seemed to blurt those words before really thinking them through. Which is why Tarryn had hesitated so long in speaking. Perhaps Callana would retract her question and the precarious balance of their friendship would remain untested.

She didn’t take it back.

Instead fear flitted across her expression; worrying, perhaps, that she’d overstepped her mark. Not that Tarryn was very good at reading others anyway. What would she know?

Still, her stomach twisted at the look on Calla’s face.

So before she could think more on it, she said, “Sure.”

And Calla’s whole being seemed to light up from within. The fire burning in her orange eyes oozing out of every fibre of her being.

“Really?” she asked, clearly still uncertain, no matter her vibrant smile.

Tarryn merely nodded, unable to form a coherent sentence before Calla’s luminescence.

-

Obviously, when departing, Calla interacted with the rest of the lair. Tarryn didn’t much like leaving her woods but also she didn’t think she could bare the way she knew Calla’s face would crumble if she changed her mind. So she stood, awkwardly, nearby while Calla said farewell to dragons who clearly thought of her as a friend. They joked and laughed and enquired as to her expected return.

It was Blacklight who stopped at Tarryn’s side. For a moment, they both simply watched the others. Then Blacklight’s eyes flicked over to her and she murmured, “Take care of her.”

Now, Tarryn didn’t know much about Blacklight at the time, not being one to take part in clan life. But later, in reflection, she would decide that such solemn words were rather out of character for Blacklight. They did have one benefit, however, and it settled low in Tarryn’s gut, warm and wiggling and uncertain.

“I will.”

-

She had not thought travel would have anything to recommend it, honestly. What could possibly be worth leaving her lair for? She found things. Eventually.

The look on Calla’s face as the first warm updraft caught her wings. The endless sparkle of lights flicking to life in lairs far below them in the evenings. Flying through clouds, and the twinkling pink of sunsets, the clear blue of oceans and glittering reefs. The way Calla spoke to complete strangers as if they were long lost friends, the way she haggled with merchants and negotiated safe passage through territory claimed by unusual clans. Her endless excitement for new things, new places, new stories.

Sitting on top of the tallest mountains and watching the stars light up the sky one by one until the entire expanse of velvet blue above them sparkled like diamonds.

The tingle that ran down her spine and shivered through her fur whenever Calla’s bright gaze came to rest on her. The way she smiled, softly.

How warm it was to curl up with her in the silence of evening in a monastery where speaking was prohibited. The feel of Calla’s nose tucked into her throat.

The way she lit up when Tarryn procured her a lute, her first attempt at bargaining with a Reedcliff merchant not inclined to take a loss.

-

There were gardens in the world, and covens of witches, and stalls that sold recipes and strange brews. Callana would watch as she peered at the dusty vials, smiling. Sometimes, Calla would leave her to scour through shops or comb through wilderness by herself. At first, Tarryn had been worried about that; afraid of being left behind, lost without her guide to the wider Sorneith.

But she learned not to be.

For Callana would always come back with little paper bags full of seeds. She’d take them home and grow the most incredible and bizarre plants. Some of which were quite difficult to coax to life beneath the misty purple boughs of the Tangled Wood. Occasionally, Calla would return with bouquets of flowers, garlands and wreaths woven of daisies and marigold and snapdragon. Tarryn would always roll her eyes at them, but there was a part of her – deep down – that tumbled unexpectedly at the notion that Calla was thinking of her. She suspected (not incorrectly) that Callana knew this.

And that’s why she did it.

That’s why Callana would take her to hidden places in the Viridian Labyrinth where green fog clouded the senses and blind seers mixed magic in copper pots. She’d show Tarryn mountain clans at the top of the world where rituals were sacred. Places in the Southern Icefield or Ashfall Waste with highly specialised flora and the botanical magics to go with.

The quiet places of the world.

Places with stories, sure. But not of the kind Callana was known for seeking. These places were just for Tarryn.

-

Callana, wearing a painfully shy expression, eyes downcast, shoulders hunched, was an anomaly. One Tarryn didn’t like overmuch. It made her uncomfortable.

“Calla?” she asked gently, worried she might have done something wrong.

She hummed, but wouldn’t meet Tarryn’s eyes. How unusual.

“Are you alright?”

“Fine.”

Carefully, Tarryn laid a hand on Calla’s arm. Her tail slipped out to loop through the skydancer’s and she lowered her nose until Calla had no choice but to look at her. “Tell me.”

Once again, Callana merely huffed.

So Tarryn waited.

They lay there, tails twined together, for several long minutes. Then, very slowly, Callana let her chin come to rest on Tarryn’s nose.

“Oh,” Tarryn sighed. For a second, she thought Calla looked like she was going to move away. So even softer, she added, “Okay.”

-

Lights sparkled overhead, twinkling quietly in multi-hued strings through the already glowing trees. There was something altogether special about the place. A secret clan in the Starfall Isles that remembered the old ways. Their concessions to the new were sporadic, vibrant things.

Callana was well known here, Tarryn had found out. She visited every few years to collect new stories, meet new faces and to participate in their Goldmoon celebrations. Tarryn had initially discredited it as nothing more than superstition; an ancient fancy preserved through the Ages and whittled into a week-long celebration in remembrance of something long forgotten.

Only at first.

Beneath the glittering fairy lights and wrapped snuggly by the ethereal music the clan created, she and Callana had walked among the trees. And the moon had risen, swollen and bright and _golden_. It cast otherworldly shadows across the branches, turned the purples pink and the blues an unusually warm green. It had wreathed Callana’s face in a warm orange light and Tarryn was certain her own scales glimmered softly in shimmering oilslick rainbows.

“You look beautiful,” Callana had murmured, obviously unaware she’d spoken aloud.

Tarryn could only stare at her, made mute by the play of light across her cheeks.

Eventually she found strength to ask, “Are there tales to go with this celebration? Some sort of myth, perhaps?”

“A few,” Calla had conceded, bobbing her head. “Tales of curses being broken, and families reunited, and the indivisible nature of lovers, and so much magic.” She tilted her head a little to one side, a now familiar gesture to Tarryn. “I’m not even sure which ones are true.”

“Tell me one?”

Calla’s cheeky smile bloomed. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Once, there was a quiet witch’s apprentice,” she began, eyes glittering in colours that defied words. “A dreamer, she couldn’t help but imagine what she might do with her magic once trained. Her tutor was continually warning her against using magic for selfish means. It will come back to hurt you, he’d say. You mustn’t be self-serving.

“She didn’t much care for that. After all, she’d seen plenty of witches making potions to help others find what they were looking for.

“In secret, about a month before the Goldmoon was to rise, she tried one for herself. She wanted something… magical. Something that would give her everything she’d ever need, something that would last the turning of the Ages. It was a vague wish, the kind that would more than likely come true. But with a catch. Something to haunt her for the rest of her days.

“When the Goldmoon eventually rose, she found herself turned to stone. Days passed like centuries and always the Goldmoon watched her, dismayed that she’d used magic to find happiness in this way. For happiness must come from more natural means, you can’t simply wish it into being.

“So she remained frozen for months, years, decades. Until eventually the spell was broken without warning. Why? She had no idea. But she was driven by the need to know. Perhaps she hadn’t yet learned her lesson about meddling in things best left to others. Or perhaps the Goldmoon was still punishing her.

“She arrived at a lair not long before the next Goldmoon celebration was set to take place. She thought it horrible timing. But in truth, it almost seemed clockwork inevitability. Another dragon there had been casting spells he ought not to have been. He told her his story and she shared hers.

“They became friends. And on the night of the Goldmoon declared that they would remain together and they would start a clan dedicated to the history of magic so that they might warn others against their mistakes.

“It is believed that clan is this one,” Callana concluded. “And that while in their lair, avowals of faithfulness are more binding than anywhere else; that the Goldmoon watches over such oaths.”

Tarryn blinked at her, eyes dazed as if clouded by a spell. Callana watched her carefully, gaze soft and gentle and warm and… hopeful.

“Do you believe in that story?” Tarryn asked quietly, speaking more to the fireflies dancing in the warm moonlight.

“I do.”

(Tarryn found she did as well.)

-

There might have been some truth to that story, she thought. Inexplicable as that seemed.

-

“The clan has no full time healer,” Osprey muttered to his gardenias. “But we do have a full time witch doctor intent on seeing us all as ill as possible.”

Tarryn felt he was being a tad dramatic. Jemma had been a perfectly lovely doctor as far as she was concerned. And she came with a mediator for a mate. What more did he want?

Callana flicked her tail at him from her perch on a warm rock. “Stop being ungrateful,” she told him.

He just eyed them both balefully. “Stop stealing my plants, Tarryn. You have your own garden.”

“I can’t very well grow every plant I’ll ever need myself, you know,” she informed him flatly. “You’re more than welcome to borrow some of mine.”

“If none of your undead plant things don’t skewer me for my efforts,” he huffed, meandering off between his rows of flowers and vegetables.

Callana grinned at him, but kept an eye on his back even after he turned away. She was such a good lookout. Osprey might know Tarryn filched plants now and then, but that didn’t mean she was going to do it while he watched.

A long moment passed in glorious peace. But it never lasted. Sometimes it was worth asking herself why she stayed in a place where everyone found her presence agitating.

“Callana!”

Tarryn stiffened. Well at least she wasn’t the target of the ire this time.

“Oh damn.”

They both turned to see Pencil all but tying herself in knots a little ways off while Denara tried to restrain her. That dragon practically went manic any time a book so much as shifted an inch. Tarryn wondered how long she’d have to read the tomes Callana had nicked for her before Pencil tried to gut her while she slept.

“Callana, I swear to Stormcatcher!” Pencil screeched. “If there’s so much as a smudge on my book you’ll never hear the end of it.”

“You’ve got no proof it was me, Pen!” Calla hollered back. “Go yell at Bereave.”

Denara sighed, the sound of a long suffering mother. “If she kills you I’m not cleaning it up.” It took a moment before Denara could convince Pencil to go back inside and Calla kept a careful eye on them the whole time. Pencil might not be the most dangerous dragon in the lair, but there was really nothing stopping her from doing either of them in.

“You know, Calla,” Tarryn muttered, turning back to watch as she gathered up plants to put in her satchel. “I think home is infinitely more exciting than a foreign lair could ever be.”

Callana only laughed.

-

In all their travels, they’d collected quite a few things. Mostly stories or music or potions. Plenty of things. But even Tarryn finds it hard to hear tales of woe and – when faced with an opportunity to change one – not do anything about it.

The lair had been abandoned for a long while, that much was obvious. Callana had picked her way through some of the rubble, clearly trying to piece together what had happened (for it would no doubt make an excellent tale), but Tarryn had been distracted by the store rooms. They probably wouldn’t need anything that might be left, but there was no harm in looking. It was just practical.

She’d barely set foot in the musty wooden room with a lopsided sign out the front proclaiming it to be ‘supply room’ in faded blue lettering. Something skittered past her feet, a flash of something bright and glittering and then a cloud of dust had her coughing. She shook her head, wondering if it had been a rodent of some kind.

It wasn’t.

What she found – after nosing through the remains of the missing clan’s hoard – was a tattered nest of leathers upon which curled a small pink hatchling. Not even a week old, she didn’t think. The child blinked at her, big eyes wide and trusting.

It squeaked.

Tarryn bundled it – _her­_ – up in cloth and carried her outside to find Callana.

“What did you find?” Callana called from where she was poking around in a mostly looted side room. “What is _that_?”

Tarryn blinked down at the squirming pink dragon in her arms and frowned, wondering if Calla was seeing something else. “A… hatchling?” she replied. It did sound more like a question but she was confused.

“What are you doing with it?”

“Her,” Tarryn corrected absently. “And I was thinking we could take her home. She has no family here.”

“But… _why_?”

Tarryn shrugged. “Last month in the Bonelands…” she trailed off, not needing to finish that thought. They’d both been there, both seen it. The squalid living conditions those dragons faced, the crime rate, the violence, the misery so thick it hung in the air like a morbid and inescapable blanket.

Calla’s shoulders slumped.

“I don’t want her to end up like that, Calla,” Tarryn whispered. She heft the child, eyes bright as they locked onto Calla. Her little paws reached out, antennae twitching as she unconsciously gauged the intent of the other skydancer.

“Gah!” the child squawked.

“It’s so… _pink_ ,” Calla whined. But she was caving and Tarryn could feel it. (And she didn’t have antennae.)

For answer, Tarryn passed her the bundle of pink. Calla pulled a face and muttered something about how horrible a mother she’d make. Tarryn didn’t listen to her. It was all nonsense.

The hatchling patted Calla’s cheek, beaming and squeaking like this was the best day of her life. Perhaps it was. Beneath the child’s excited babbling, Calla deflated.

“She’ll need a name, you know. And we’ll have to baby-proof the den; your magic is not safe for infants, Rin.”

But Tarryn only smiled.

The child went home with them.

-

The clan produced mixed reactions upon finding out they’d brought a hatchling home but mostly, so Tarryn thought, the biggest cause for concern was simply who her parents were.

They had such little faith.

Anthelion took equal parts after her mothers. She picked up Tarryn’s proclivity for magic and Callana’s easy charm. And she wielded both so expertly, finding herself a nice niche within the clan and while Bereave declared she was ‘much too young to be an aunt, Tarryn’ she and Blacklight both doted on the little pink bundle of fur. More so than anyone else.

(Tarryn had long suspected they were significantly more invested in her relationship with Callana than they might want to let on. Callana would neither confirm nor deny her accusations. Which was as good as saying ‘yes, dear, they were both very determined to make this happen’ as far as Tarryn was concerned.)

Raising a child was not without its trials either, but they managed. Anthelion herself seemed only too pleased to have a family. And whenever in doubt, Tarryn only had to think of the Bonelands and some previously unknown maternal part of herself would twist painfully at the idea that Anthelion might have been just like them.

-

It was a strange sort of relief when Kieri turned up on their doorstep.

Some in the clan (Inerri, most notably) didn’t seem to feel as if raising another child as part of their clan were worth it. Tarryn could only think that it would be a shame to send her away when Anthelion seemed so mesmerised by her.

Kieri’s magic was different to Anthelion’s, less about manipulation and more about plants. Something Tarryn appreciated a great deal.

Anthelion’s quiet confession to her parents that Kieri meant a lot to her gave Tarryn an odd pang low in her stomach. She didn’t know if it was good or not. But the tentative smile Anthelion wore so often when with Kieri reminded Tarryn of the way Calla sometimes (still) looked at her.

Tarryn grew a bone-plant creature for Kieri all the same. Her way of assuring Anthelion that she was proud. Kieri still seemed anxious around her but then again most dragons were.

Calla, on the other hand, was more forthright with her thoughts.

The results were amusing at least. But their den felt… bigger when Anthelion left them.

She curled up much closer to Callana that first evening.

-

The move to Dragonhome came slowly. In the end, it wasn’t so much a surprise as it was merely an inconvenience.

Tarryn had looked at her den, carved out painstakingly amid the more sociable dragons to be a quieter, isolated haven. Her garden – now mostly ruined thanks to the fighting – and her hollow for potion making, the plot of land where Hollen and Caelin and all the rest had grown together and the tree where she’d first seen Callana. It had been ripped clean out of the ground, broken and shattered, debris cluttering up her well-tended living space.

There was nothing welcoming about it anymore.

Part of her wanted nothing but to stay, to clean up and rebuild. This was _her_ space. She’d chosen it for her work and hobbies and it was perfect. She doubted she’d find a suitable replacement.

And yet.

“Our daughter is leaving soon.” Callana’s voice eased all her worries, as it always did. “She and Kieri are going with the injured this afternoon.”

“This is home, Calla.”

After a moment, Callana’s warm nose nudged at her cheek, the rest of her body pressing into Tarryn’s. A solid reminder of what is real.

“Venin isn’t staying, you know.”

Tarryn had heard. He’d officially relinquished control to Kieri that morning. A little late, she thought, but at least he wasn’t going to undermine her decision. And Tarryn was so certain the little nocturne was making the _right_ decision.

She was so certain that Anthelion had given her the right advice.

Hollen looked up at her with empty eyes as she surveyed her ex-garden one last time.

“We should go with them, then,” Tarryn murmured.

She felt when Calla smiled. “Are you saying that to support Anthelion or because if you’re the first one there you get first dibs on the best place to put your garden?”

Tarryn rolled her eyes. Then she stood, waiting for Calla to join her.

As they set off through the trees for the last time, she whispered, “Both.”

-

Tarryn did not ever consider herself sentimental.

Except when it came to Callana.


End file.
